Coralspin Interview

On By bradbirzerIn Uncategorized2 Comments

One of my favorite CDs to make an appearance this year comes from a band with a big Trevor Rabin or Trevor Horn kind of feel to it: Coralspin’s Honey and Lava.  Very graciously, band leader Blake McQueen allowed me to take up his valuable time to interview him.  This is the first of what I hope will be many such interviews at Progarchy.  Here’s my review of Honey and Lava.

On to the interview.

1350332246_Coralspin_web1-Oct2012Progarchy: Blake, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us.  I’m sure you’re incredibly busy.  So, again, thank you.  As you know, I’m a huge fan of your first CD, and I think while you guys have already gotten a lot of notice, there’s much, much more to come.  Would you mind telling our readers a bit about yourself–especially our North and Latin American readers who aren’t as familiar with the U.K. prog scene. 

Blake: We come from the melodic, more song-orientated end of the prog spectrum. Ellie, the singer and keyboardist and myself, also a keyboard player, are classically trained. Ellie is also a classically-trained oboeist, although we haven’t yet put that to use! Jake had a Dad who liked to play jazz piano, and as a result Jake can play jazz piano pretty well himself, but he taught himself guitar as his main instrument. Both the guys in our new rhythm section can play piano as well, so we are an all-piano-playing band!

Speaking of the new rhythm section, this is something we want to announce, we’re very excited about it. We’ve got Mick Wilson on bass, and Ed Gorrod on drums, they’ve both joined us on a ‘session’ basis for gigging next year and for the recording of the second album. They are absolutely awesome players and the band sounds phenomenal. Mick comes from an instrumental prog band who are friends of ours called Red Bazar, we have gigged with them previously. Ed’s also in a prog band called Stuntmen.

Prog magazine recently described as like ‘Brian May and Rick Wakeman’s prog child’, which is not a bad description, although on Honey and Lava I perhaps sound more like Tony Banks than Rick Wakeman as I don’t do many whizzy keyboard bits (more of that on the next album, though).

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Flying Colors (Best of 2012 — Part 4)

On By Time LordIn 20122 Comments

Flying Colors

Another one of the albums in my Top Ten for 2012 is Flying Colors.

The sad fact is that so many “supergroup” collaborations end up being less than the sum of their parts.

But this collaboration is a glorious exception. Everything has gone right here.

Neal Morse (and Mike Portnoy) teaming up with Steve Morse (and Dave LaRue)?

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Now THAT’S a Prog Guitar!

On By Thaddeus WertIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

In 1985, my wife and I had the privilege of seeing Michael Hedges live. I still can’t believe one man alone on stage could produce so much music. Aerial Boundaries is one of those genre-transcending albums that is an immediate classic and redefines the possibilities of what can be done on a guitar . Yesterday, December 2, was the 15th anniversary of his passing. What a terrible loss for us all when he was killed in an automobile accident in California. Here’s a video of him playing “Because It’s There” on a “harp-guitar” (the music begins at 2:30 if you want to skip the intro):

Genesis Revisited II/Kompendium: Looking Forwards and Backwards

On By bradbirzerIn Uncategorized1 Comment

By Alison Henderson

Two albums have been released in the past month, which have presented an interesting fork in the prog road, so far as I am concerned. They have a great deal in common in terms of where their roots lie and the musicians which appear collectively on both. And both may succeed in their own ways in bringing more listeners into the proverbial prog fold.

 

Genesis Revisited II

hckttGenesis Revisited II is Steve Hackett’s continuing project to rearrange and revitalise some of the vast Genesis canon, a task he started 16 years ago with the first volume, Watcher of the Skies. As currently one of the busiest and most sought after prog artists in the business, this has been a huge undertaking for him. The cast of musicians he has picked this time reflects the crème de la crème of prog with his trusty inner circle of Nick Beggs, Lee Pomeroy, Roger King, Gary O’Toole, Amanda Lehmann, Rob Townsend, Phil Mulford along with special guests that include Steven Wilson, Francis Dunnery, Nik Kershaw, Mikael Åkerfeldt, Steve Rothery, Nad Sylvan, Jakko Jakszyk, Neal Morse and Roine Stolt plus John Wetton, Nick Magnus and his brother John Hackett who appeared on volume one.

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Genesis Revisited II

On By Dr NickIn Uncategorized3 Comments

Reinterpreting the much-loved classics of one of the seminal 70s prog bands is a sensitive business, even if you are one of those responsible for creating said classics in the first place. Tinker too much and you risk losing the essence of what made those classic songs so good; change too little and people will question the point of the exercise.

The former criticism was levelled at Steve Hackett in some quarters when he released the first of his Genesis retrospectives, back in 1998. Fourteen years on, he charts a safer and more successful course with this follow-up album, opting for a more subtle treatment of seventeen Genesis songs across the 2 hours 23 minutes of a double CD. He also find space to revisit four songs from his lengthy solo career.

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The Extravagant Shadows – David Gatten

On By Craig BreadenIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

ImageI had the fortune last evening, unbelievably as part of my job, to see what is only the third screening of David Gatten’s new digital movie, The Extravagant Shadows.  Gatten, who typically works in film, introduced his work and apologized in advance for its length.  At three hours, the movie is a departure for the filmmaker, who typically works in short films.  But “I play for keeps,” he said, “I put all my marbles in the circle.” I admire that.

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While I am unfamiliar with Gatten’s other films, so can’t bring to it the kind of context I would like, I was struck by its musicality and thought it appropriate I write about it on the pages of Progarchy.  It is a layered work, composed but also improvisatory, rhythmic and surprising.  And, while it is difficult to describe in terms of story or narrative, its physicality is fairly simple:  A song by Merrilee Rush — whose songs play at intervals through the movie, including her 1968 hit “Angel of the Morning” — plays over a blank screen, and as it fades out the frame is filled by a shelf of perhaps 10 or 11 books, their colorful spines revealing early 20th century editions of works by James, Dickens, Dumas, and others.  Into this static shot slides a glass panel, and we briefly see Gatten and the DSLR he used to shoot the movie.  The artist, and his tools, are present in this film, which subsequently became even more apparent, as a hand and a brush loaded with paint enters the frame, and proceeds to paint the panel.  Over the course of 175 minutes this panel is painted and repainted, bright and muted colors blending, contrasting, drying and cracking, revealing layers underneath.  Between new coats being applied text appears and disappears on the screen, stories and descriptions emerging, disappearing, running into one another, suggesting to me the magic realism of Borges or Pynchon.

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Music Sacra: James MacMillan and his music for our times

On By Kevin McCormickIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

In September 2010, when Pope Benedict made his historic and transformative visit to the United Kingdom, his first stop was Glasgow, Scotland. There, as he inaugurated the first-ever official state visit by the pope to the UK, he celebrated the opening Mass to the sounds of newly commissioned liturgical music. The music was thoughtful, joyful, singable, yet richly musical. It was the premiere of a work by a man well known in the contemporary classical music community but less known to those outside it: Scottish composer James MacMillan… continue

Spock’s Beard: The 11th Album

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Preorders are now open at Indiegogo for the 11th studio album by Spock’s Beard, entitled Brief Nocturnes and Dreamless Sleep.

The album is available as a digital download or physical CD, with various optional perks such as band signatures, T-shirts, bandanas, photos, etc.

A March 2013 release is predicted.

Momentum (Best of 2012 — Part 3)

On By Time LordIn 20121 Comment

Momentum

Another one of the albums in my Top Ten for 2012 is Neal Morse’s Momentum.

Brad Birzer appends a useful album overview to the end of his epic CWR review of Neal Morse’s career:

Not a concept in the way several of his other albums are, Momentum most resembles his penultimate album with Spock’s Beard, “V.” As with its 2000 counterpart, Momentum has six songs. The first five are eight minutes or less long, with the last song being a 34-minute epic.

With skill and passion, Morse’s new album considers [in “Momentum”:] the pace of modernity and our reactions to it, [in “Thoughts Part 5”:] the necessity of appearing deep in conversation, [in “Smoke and Mirrors”:] how to weather deception in this world, [in “Weathering Sky”:] how one interprets his calling in the world, and [in “Freak”:] the way a powerful spiritual figure would be perceived should he arrive bodily in the present day (I’ll leave it for the reader to discover the identity of the protagonist in the track, “Freak,” as Morse deftly leaves the identity a mystery until the very end of the song) in his shorter tunes.

The epic is, well, epic. As the title, “World without End,” suggests, the thirty-four minutes explore the motivations of a person, and especially whether he or she is trying to shape the ephemeral or the permanent and timeless.

I have to admit that one of my favorite moments on the disc is when the title track glides on into the killer guitar solo that is expertly framed by an ecstatically swirling keyboard flight path:

Go listen to 3:10—4:10 on the album track…

Indeed, that is definitely one of the best minutes of prog we have heard all year.

(Note: 2:49—3:18 in the video below has the killer guitar solo, but omits the awesome keyboard/guitar dogfight. But I am not complaining: I love that I heard the Single Edit version first by watching it as a sneak peek on YouTube; and then, even though I had already fallen in love with the song, when I downloaded the album itself, I got the extra thrill of hearing the suddenly-new keyboard/guitar dogfight now added to the end! It was a unique experience unparalleled by any previous prog preview encounter!)

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Gilberto Gil Loves Us

On By Craig BreadenIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Ah! We can see this for what it is: a masterful searching for rhythms and melodies, rooted in heritage, clothed in artistic progress, presented as gritty authenticity.  Heritage. Progress. Authenticity.  Three weeks ago, when I saw Gilberto Gil perform at Memorial Hall on the campus of UNC Chapel Hill, there WAS a master at work.  Over 50 years a professional musician, Gil shows no sign of slowing down.  Credited, with fellow Brazilian Caetano Veloso, for creating from a bewitching hybrid of bossa nova and rock’n’roll what became known as tropicalia, Gil is a living legend.  And he should be, for at age 70 he boogied and strutted with his audience and band for two hours, electric guitar casually over his shoulder, a set of musicianly masters in their own right, clearly in love with him, backing him up.

The only point of comparison I have for this is seeing Carlos Santana circa 1987 at the Dallas Fair Park Bandshell, where 5,000 Texicans and 4 white people shook their asses for a couple of hours while Carlos played hardly a hit and barely anything I recognized.  Revelatory.  Fast forward 25 years and the experience is nearly duplicated.  I do not discount the Latin commonality of these two experiences.  As with the Mexican roots of Santana’s music, in Brazil’s music fusions are perhaps most likely to occur.  African, Portugese, Spanish, and Asian musics have mixed with each other for decades if not centuries, and with rock thrown in I defy anyone not to call it progressive.  So much so, in fact, that Velosa and Gil were forced into political exile in the late 60s/early 70s, biding their time in London while things cooled down in the home country.  Music that matters, like your life depended on it.

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